This invention relates to a food container pot or feeding bowl assembly comprising a food container pot or feeding bowl for holding ready prepared food, for domestic animals, such as cats and dogs.
Today, even domestic animals are being fed more and more with ready-prepared foods. This is advantageous particularly when the feeding is to be carried out, for example during the absence of the animal's owner, by neighbours or by children. In particular, the use of already portioned ready-prepared foods offers advantages, because if the food-containing pot or bowl is appropriately marked confusion is unlikely and a correct quantity of food is presented to the animal.
A disadvantage at present is, however, that the prepared food is usually supplied in commercial cans or plastics containers, which usually are unsuitable for use as feeding bowls. This may be due to the limited size of the container opening and/or to lack of stability of the container. A disadvantage common to all containers, not only for prepared foods, is however to be found in their low resistance to slipping on the surface on which they are placed. Since, for example, dogs and cats draw liquid or pasty foods into their mouths with the surfaces of their tongues, the feeding bowls is inevitably displaced during eating step by step over a more or less smooth floor surface in the direction in which the animal is facing. This is accompanied by the risk that a trial of food may be left behind the pot or bowl on the floor or, if the pot or bowl strikes an obstruction, such as the edge of a carpet, it may even tip over.
But even where slip resistance and stability are adequate, the risk exists, particularly with pots or bowls of small opening width, of slobbering and thus unpleasant fouling of the floor in the region of the pot or bowl.
Finally, the eating of food from re-usable feeding pots or bowls is undesirable from hygienic considerations, because the pots or bowls are frequently washed together with crockery of the animal owner or at least rinsed with and in the same cleaning equipment. This entails the risk of a transfer of infection from the animal.